Ticker for April 19, 2022

                
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Moisture Quest




Right, that meme barely works, but we wanted to pay homage to possibly the best
movie ever made...certainly a Gen X masterpiece.

"It's only 6 minutes."

Well, in this case, "It's only 6 counties," as in, the rain is always absent
about 6 counties in from the far western Panhandle. We try desperately to push
that rain forecast farther west each week, and it never seems to materialize.

Quick question: Do you know how many days it has been since Boise City has seen
at least a tenth of an inch of rain in a single day?

WRONG! (channel Dana Carvey doing the McLaughlin Group here, for effect).

190 days.

Quick question #2: Do you know how many days Kenton hasn't seen a quarter-inch?

WRONG!

234 days.

Oh, you said 234 days? Well, WRONG anyway because with today it's 235 days!





And now that we are almost firmly in the rainy season, we see that western
Oklahoma continues to miss out, at least for the most part.







Aided by La Nina, the drought continues to carry a gigantic log up and down the
bleachers out west, each storm system bringing big fire danger weather to
that portion of the state, and decent moisture to the east. Hence we go with the
next week as another big trough sits out West and spins away, flinging out
storm systems before it moves over this weekend. We have a chance, finally,
to maybe pull some of that moisture west. It's very iffy at this point, but
western OK should see SOME moisture. Where have you heard that before? And I
know the Panhandle is scoffing at that statement as well. But keep hope alive,
there is more rain on the way, possibly. Check out the outlook for next Sunday
through Thursday.



I think a lot of that is hinged on that big rain Sunday with the main storm
system moving east. However, it does paint some above normal rainfall across
western OK. Even the Panhandle.

So we hope that rain map starts to pull that moisture west as we go forward.

It ain't the 6 counties. It's what HAPPENS in those 6 counties.

Rain, we hope.

Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
gmcmanus@mesonet.org